September 9, 2019
New York, New York
I was 25 years old
No more rain in the forecast but it was pretty cool, still shy of 70 degrees, so I needed to brainstorm an outfit. Feeling bad I hadn’t allowed this summer to be the “season of crop tops” I’d intended it to be, I took that $5 blue pullover I’d gotten at Laconia’s Goodwill and made the Bold For Me decision to cut it at the belly. Wore it with my black cut-offs and my Brian nameplate, which was making an appearance for the first time in a long time. Took a hint of an Addy to keep me moving and got on the train to meet Austin at Myrtle-Broadway, to then take the M together up to the park.
Austin liked my sweater and I felt accomplished. He’d suggested recently that my habit of altering the way I dress to mirror the boys I’m attracted to “isn’t real change.” And I don’t know, I suppose I understand what he was getting at. But I disagree. Maybe there’s something kind of misguided, something a little sad, something a little too rooted in the potential external validation of it all. But who’s to say that any change isn’t real change? So much of my angst and frustration these days has to do with feeling like I’m doing all the changing and yet, objectively, I do look better than ever. My hair cut, my hair period. What with far fewer nights spent snacking in my bedroom alone, I’m thinner than ever. And I’m dressing better. I find myself feeling more conscious of clothes and trends and what looks good. And in ways that really don’t feel entirely disingenuous, I’m better. I’m changed. I’m different. And what couldn’t be real about that?
We got off at the 53rd Street Station. Or whatever. 57th Street? Who knows. Walked to the park from there. A totally beautiful evening and I was only kind of hot in my “sweater.” He’s way more familiar with Manhattan but I have the better sense of direction so I led our way to SummerStage. The line was pretty long, as far as general admission was concerned, but Austin? A Chase credit card holder! And there was this special entry line that only had like three people on it. Had to wait a minute or two to be let in but was all the while able to watch a truly HOSTILE security woman just eviscerate every person who asked her questions about what was going on, if they could cut across the path, etcetera. Knowing me, I always would have been entertained by her but all the more so after recently reading the revelatory “On Rudeness” essay in Rachel Cusk’s new collection. Before long, we were in.
The set-up was much smaller than I’d anticipated. And not many people were there yet so we ended up being just as close to the stage as we’d been for Haim at Pitchfork. I wasn’t carrying a bag, purposefully, and we didn’t get drinks, though we thought about it. It was a young, hip, attractive crowd. I likely would have made fun of this demonstration of “youth” not too long ago but that’s never Austin’s M.O. I can see the merits of it, certainly. Truly nothing to gain in fearing or mocking young people. Though it is fun sometimes.
Lucy Dacus was the opener and she was just great. I hadn’t listened to her much but I recognized a few songs. And she did a couple new ones so I wasn’t alone in my ignorance. She did this beautiful cover of “La Vie en Rose” and I so often only listen to French versions that I forgot how sweet that final line is. “Give your heart and soul to me and life will always be…”
Maybe 20 minutes or so passed before Mitski came out. Was fun to be so much closer to her this time around. Last time we saw her, she didn’t perform with “the table” but we got it this time and it made for such a good show. She really is such a great performer. Criminally serious but it works for her. And just so deeply cool. Loved “Happy.” Loved watching her dance. She has a certain commitment to artistry and performance that I feel like is missing from her alt-girl-with-guitar contemporaries.
A couple songs into the show, I either feel a poke on my shoulder or hear someone behind me say, “I’m sorry but can we switch spots? I can’t see from behind you.” Meanwhile, I’d been standing in that exact spot for over an hour by then. Without fully turning around, I suggest a little open spot right in front of me but, even then, I’m a second away from just deferring to her. Austin says “No” in my ear and pulls me closer beside him. And this is when I recognize who this girl is—Carrie, Twitter Music Girl. And, having observed this before, I knew she must have already tweeted about a guy blocking her view at a show. I can’t help being tall! So, never one to feign ignorance in such a setting, I said, “Carrie?!” She recognized me but we didn’t discuss it, not then and not since. That’s fine.
As the silence of an encore fell, Austin turned to me and said, “Does it smell like a school gymnasium in here?” To which I said, with utmost sincerity, “I know,” commenting further on whatever aroma I was smelling. And it literally took him aback for a moment, briefly silent as he realized I did not at all catch his reference to the song she was about to play. A song I know and love! If I’m not mishearing, I’m misunderstanding, I swear. Not to mention it being the very same song that soundtracked the fateful First Move he made, when we saw her last year at Brooklyn Steel. I was the one standing behind him this time around, mirroring—and only kind of cheesily—our very same arrangement from that night. Smooching his neck a time or two. Our fingers lingering in each other’s back pockets throughout the show. A worthy amendment to the goings-on of our first Mitski show. Oh, how things have changed.
The show let out and I guided us in the general direction of a street exit out to the Upper East Side. I realized that this was the first time I’d ever been in Central Park at night. As I shared this aloud with Austin, I noticed three familiar backs-of-heads. Liz, Morgan, and her boyfriend Felipe.
“Boston’s finest,” I squeal, and getting zero reaction from them, I repeat, “Boston’s finest!”
They turned around. Morgan and Felipe were visiting for Bushwig and, naturally, Mitski as well. Funny to think we didn’t see each other at the show but I guess there were a lot of people there. Felipe was very friendly, saying how he feels like he knows me already from what he’s been shown online. I believe their relationship is open. I don’t know how gay guys do it and I really don’t know how straight people do it. Our shared INFPdom was brought up. Adore that Morgan, Liz, and I are alike in that regard. Liz was a vision, as per usual. Her hair so magnificently half-up half-down. After offering us a hit of her spliff, she said we should hang out soon and both of us agreed. Once a Saint, always a Saint.
Parted ways with them as we went off in pursuit of food. Was approaching 10 at that point and his go-to Chipotle near his office was closed once we got there. We settled for McDonald’s. And though I wasn’t initially gonna get anything beyond a cup of water, I ordered a small fry. Washed my hands in the shockingly clean bathroom of a Midtown McDonald’s and came back to sit down with my boyfriend and eat. And everything was so easy at that moment, eating our fries on the second floor of that McDonald’s, looking down on Third Avenue. He took a picture of me and tweeted it saying, “I don’t know a hotter person.” And in the midst of all the feelings that preceded this moment, if I can break down what felt so easy, what was making me so happy and so impossibly in love, it was that I wasn’t resisting anything. I place myself so often in such competition with him, so conscious of all that I lack and all that he has. And I knew then more than ever that he would never want me to feel that way, that he sees no point in all the torturing I subject myself to. And I don’t either. With any luck, I’ll realize that soon.
June 9, 2021
Brooklyn, New York
I am 27 years old
I eat my relationship with change every morning for breakfast. At the height of my Boston dog walking days, it was the time consuming but protein-packed two fried eggs on a buttered English muffin with arugula. Then I lived for free on a Swedish grandmother’s enclosed porch and, never wanting to hog her kitchen, opted for the no-cook though just as filling full-fat Greek yogurt with chopped up Medjool dates. When I was waking up earlier than ever for my job at the museum, I subsisted off kale and peanut butter smoothies. Earlier this year, I fell in and out of love with cottage cheese. And, as of a week or two ago, I make an overnight chia pudding for myself. A culinary trajectory that has gradually arced toward the anorexic, yes, but nevertheless speaks to something. Namely, that things should stay very, very still and exactly the same until some indiscriminate time has passed and, sudden as a stroke, I want it all to be different. Because while I’m still not in love with chia pudding, let’s just say going back to cottage cheese would be beyond the pale.
So, to Austin’s point, is this actually change? When the ingredients of my proverbial breakfasts differ but the point of the meal itself stays essentially the same. Because of course, like most everything, I can justify it. Rationalizing my regimens by either pointing to the stars and attributing it to my Virgo rising or pointing to my wallet, blaming it on how much more affordable it is to buy the same exact groceries and prepare the same exact meals every single week. Either way, it’s a habit lodged somewhere deep in my spinal cord by now. Making me into someone who will resist, resist, resist until, with a shrug, I defer.
When I first landed at O’Hare, freshly arrived for my summer living on that aforementioned porch, I was so completely swept up by it all. Making my way to the Blue Line, every last summerly possession tucked away in the duffel on my shoulder, I just about squealed out loud, “There is nothing better than new.” After being so staidly myself for so long in Boston, wearing the same exact clothes to walk the same dogs down the same streets and doing it all with a stomach full of the same breakfast, here I was about to live somewhere so different. Shortly thereafter, I took a job walking dogs.
Those moments I mentioned, when I place myself in competition with Austin, I’m certain it returns, again, to change. Because in an almost sacredly kind of Gemini fashion, Austin is constantly switching up his interests, his habits, his preferences. We watched Survivor for months on end until that got replaced, and only briefly, with The Great British Bake Off before the early (and objectively excellent) seasons of Grey’s Anatomy took precedence. And yet all the while: he is himself. Swapping one binged show or hair cut or sneaker for another based solely on what feels good and right. Something so fundamental and true pushing him toward change while I so easily feel like as much as I shake up the ingredients, my meals stay the same. But what is true about me is that something fundamental had changed that night we saw Mitski in Central Park—nine months after we saw her in Brooklyn and Austin first shared his feelings for me and I was too scared to possibly lose him as a friend in exchange for anything different. It was my arms wrapped around him now, not the other way around, and I was the one expressing something, if only physically, from some vulnerable little place. Thinking of a future in which he and I look so perfectly different together while, from the stage, Mitski sang, “To think that we could stay the same but we’re just two slow dancers, last ones out.”